Telecommunications is a rapidly evolving industry that has exploded in recent years with many types of services and supporting systems coming to market. The convergence of the Internet and wireless communications has opened the door for providing services that heretofore were not available to the cellular user. Cellular telephones have been widely accepted because of the low cost and allow individuals to move about freely yet stay in contact with friends, and further, to function as sources of information including data and multimedia files.
Mobile subscribers are interested in at least the same wide variety of content that can be accessed via computers on global IP networks such as the Internet. For example, subscribers can input requests to providers for multimedia services that include information related to news, weather, traffic, stock information, game downloading, ring tone music downloads, streaming video content, and more. For some of these services such as streaming video or game downloading, subscribers are more cost conscious rather than caring about the specific time of the day the services can be provided. Moreover, for some of these services, many subscribers may desire common content and not care if they receive the service via a broadcast technology or peer-to-peer technique.
New and updated mobile networks and associated services will continue to be brought online as technology continues to evolve in order to meet consumer demand. However, mobile telephone networks are expensive to build and once implemented, need to be maintained for some time based on the large number of phones sold to use the network and services. Multimode phones are an attempt to address the variety of networks and services available to users. However, phone users are still limited in the networks and ways in which information can be communicated to destinations.